In the Spring of 2015, Bétonsalon – Centre for Art and Research wel­comes artist Maryam Jafri to develop a four months exper­i­mental exhi­bi­tion and public pro­gram in Paris. Titled The Day After, it will be the artist’s first pro­ject in France and will acti­vate a broad local and inter­na­tional net­work of col­lab­o­ra­tors and par­tic­i­pants.

The Day After takes root in Maryam Jafri’s ongoing pro­ject Independence Day 1934-1975 (2009-pre­sent), an instal­la­tion com­posed of pho­tographs taken on the first inde­pen­dence day in former European colonies across Asia and Africa, between 1934 and 1975. The photos are sourced from the coun­tries them­selves and dis­play striking sim­i­lar­i­ties despite dis­parate geo­graph­ical and tem­poral ori­gins, revealing a polit­ical model exported from Europe and in the pro­cess of being cloned throughout the world. The instal­la­tion gathers images sourced from 29 Asian and African archives, jux­ta­posed according to a specific grid around cat­e­gories of events. In her arrange­ment, Jafri empha­sizes the generic char­acter of the rituals and cer­e­monies that took place during that 24 hours twi­light period when a ter­ri­tory trans­forms into a nation-state. The grid, rem­i­nis­cent of both photo-con­cep­tu­alism and the sto­ry­board medium, is broken, dis­turbing the ide­o­log­ical order at play in the images and sug­gesting non-linear read­ings.

The Day After will take this rare “col­lec­tion of col­lec­tions” – as Maryam Jafri calls it – as a starting point to ques­tion var­ious artistic, his­tor­ical and polit­ical issues arising from these images and their his­tor­ical and insti­tu­tional back­ground. What do we see when we look at the pho­to­graphic depic­tion of an event? How is his­tory framed by its rep­re­sen­ta­tions? How are images and their sig­ni­fi­ca­tions affected by their con­text of cir­cu­la­tion? How do visual sym­me­tries and com­par­isons trans­form our under­standing of the nar­ra­tives arising from the days of inde­pen­dence and, by exten­sion, the days after? And, back­stage, what do con­di­tions of access and preser­va­tion reveal about the stakes pro­jected onto these pho­tographs?

Conceived as a space of encoun­ters and debates, the exhi­bi­tion will serve as a ter­rain of inves­ti­ga­tion to map these ques­tions through a con­stel­la­tion of mate­rial and imma­te­rial con­tri­bu­tions (work­shops, sem­i­nars and per­for­mances) bringing the audi­ence together with Maryam Jafri and a net­work of researchers, scholars, jour­nal­ists and artists. This pro­gram will develop in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­eral depart­ments from Paris Diderot University; art schools (Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée; Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes-Métropole); and Kadist Art Foundation, among others.

Maryam Jafri is an artist working in video, per­for­mance and pho­tog­raphy, with a specific interest in ques­tioning the cul­tural and visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his­tory, pol­i­tics and economy. Over the last years, she notably inves­ti­gated the con­nec­tions between food pro­duc­tion and the pro­duc­tion of desire (Avalon, 2011) ; the elab­o­ra­tion of his­tor­ical nar­ra­tives through a post-colo­nial per­spec­tive (Siege of Khartoum, 1884, 2006) ; the effects of glob­al­iza­tion on working con­di­tions (Global Slum, 2012) or the polit­ical stakes of food net­works (Mouthfeel, 2014). Informed by a research based, inter­dis­ci­plinary pro­cess, her art­works are often marked by a visual lan­guage posed between film and the­atre and a series of nar­ra­tive exper­i­ments oscil­lating between script and doc­u­ment, frag­ment and whole. The Day After is her first exhi­bi­tion in France.

Solo exhi­bi­tions include Gasworks (London), Bielefelder Kunstverein (Bielefeld), Galerie Nova (Zagreb), Beirut (Cairo), the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), and Malmö Konst Museum (Malmö). Her work has also been been fea­tured exten­sively in inter­na­tional group exhi­bi­tions, including at Beirut Art Center, 21er Haus (Vienna), Institute for African Studies (Moscow) and Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo); Camera Austria (Graz), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), CAFAM Biennial (Beijing), Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (Miami) in 2014; Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Mukha (Antwerp) in 2013; Manifesta 9 (Genk), Shangai Biennial and Taipei Biennial (Taipei) in 2012, among others. She was an artist-in-res­i­dence at the Delfina Foundation in London in 2014, as part of the pro­gram "The Politics of Food". In 2015, she will be part of the Belgian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial. She lives and works between New York and Copenhaghen.

Partners

The Day After is supported by the Usage des Patrimoines Numérisés (Paris Sorbonne Cité) network, the Danish Arts Foundation, the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design Toulon Provence Méditerranée, and the Cultural Service of University Paris Diderot. The Day After is part of PIANO, Prepared Platform for Contemporary Art, France–Italy 2014-2016, initiated by d.c.a / French association for the development of centres d’art, in partnership with the Institut français in Italy, the French Embassy in Italy and the Institut français, with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati.

Maryam Jafri is a laureate of the international residency program Ville de Paris / Institut français Les Récollets.